Untitled - the Digital Library of Georgia

604 GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS
with the dead. One of the Georgia Volunteers, afterwards a Colonel
in the Confederate service, said: 'I fought through the Civil War. It
has been my experience to see men shot to pieces and slaughtered by
thousands. But the Cherokee removal was the cruelest work I ever
saw.'
"To prevent escape, the soldiers were ordered to surround each
house, as far as possible, so as to come upon the occupants without
warning. One old patriarch, when thus surprised, calmly called his
children and grandchildren around him, and, kneeling down, bade them
pray with him in their own language, while the astonished soldiers
looked on in silence. Then rising, he led the way into exile. In an
other instance, a woman, on finding the house surrounded, went to the
door and called up the chickens to be fed for the last time, after which,
taking her infant on her back and her two older children by the hand,
she followed her husband with the soldiers.
"All were not thus submissive. One old man named Charles was
seized with his wife, his brother, and his three sons, together with the
families of the latter. Exasperated by the brutality accorded his wife,
who, being unable to travel fast, was prodded with bayonets to hasten
her steps, he urged the other men to join with him in a dash for liberty.
As he spoke in Cherokee, the soldiers understood nothing until each
warrior sprang upon the one nearest and endeavored to wrench his gun
from him. The attack was so sudden and unexpected that one soldier
was killed, while the Indians escaped to the mountains. Hundreds of
others, some of them from the stockades, also managed to escape from
time to time and subsisted on roots and wild berries until the hunt was
over. Finding it impossible to secure these fugitives, General Scott
finally tendered them a proposition, through Colonel W. H. Thomas,
their trusted friend, to the effect that if they would surrender Charles
for punishment the rest would be allowed to remain until the matter
could be adjusted by the government. On hearing of the proposition
Charles voluntarily came in with his sons, offering himself a sacrifice
for his people. By command of General Scott, Charles, his brother
and his sons were shot near the mouth of the Tuckasegee, a detachment
of Cherokee prisoners being forced to do the shooting in order to
impress upon the Indians the fact that they were helpless. From these
fugitives, who were thus permitted to remain, originated the eastern
band of Cherokees.
"When nearly 17,000 Indians had thus thus been gathered into
the stockades, the work of removal began. Early in June several par
ties, aggregating about 5,000 persons, were brought down by the troops
to the old agency on the Hiawassee at Calhoun, Tenn., to Ross's Land
ing, now Chattanooga, Tenn., and to Gunter's Landing, now Gunters-
ville, Ala., where they were put upon steamers and transported down
the Tennessee and Ohio to the further side of the Mississippi, where the
journey was continued by land to Indian" Territory. The removal, in
the hottest part of the year, was attended by such sickness and mor
tality that, by resolution of the Cherokee national council, Ross and
other chiefs submitted to General Scott a proposition that the Cher-